Capital with Lions Mounted by Nude Riders

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Lions, humans, and snakes encircle this capital in a dynamic composition that transforms the block’s four separate sides into a continuous parade of creatures. The sculptures of ancient Rome, which celebrated the nude form and often incorporated such symbolically powerful beasts as lions and snakes, inspired the creation of this wild and enigmatic object. Many ancient artworks were available to medieval art makers, and western European sculptors working around the year 1100 seem to have studied them particularly closely, though their own creations reveal that they were less interested in directly copying antiquity than in reinterpreting it for their own purposes. For such works, which typically decorated churches, pagan subjects took on new, Christian significances. Though its site of origin is unknown, in its style and choice of subjects this capital is similar to sculptures made for the Cathedral of Jaca in the northern Spanish province of Aragon and for the church of Saint-Sernin de Toulouse in southern France, two sites closely connected across the Pyrenees. Its distinctive stone, which captured tiny, fossilized marine creatures, is quarried on both sides of these mountains.

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art